Endovascular methods have been proposed for treatment of aneurysm of the aorta particularly where the aneurysm is adjacent the aorta bifurcation but when an aneurysm occurs higher up in the aorta, in the region of the descending aorta adjacent the thoracic arch or in the ascending aorta, endovascular techniques for treating these aneurysms are somewhat more difficult because of the arched nature of the thoracic arch, the occurrence of major arteries in the region and the proximity to the heart.
Generally operations to treat aneurisms of the aorta in this region have been done by open chest surgery by surgical replacement of the aorta with a tubular prosthesis. It is proposed in this invention to use a combination of open chest surgery and endovascular deployment to deploy a prosthesis to treat aneurysms and the like in the thoracic arch area of the aorta.
For this purpose a particular construction of prosthesis is proposed as well as a deployment device and a method and deploying the device into the aorta.
Throughout this specification the term distal with respect to a portion of the aorta, a deployment device or a prosthesis is the end of the aorta, deployment device or prosthesis further away in the direction of blood flow away from the heart and the term proximal means the portion of the aorta, deployment device or end of the prosthesis nearer to the heart.